Children of the Corn 4: The Gathering

release year: 1996
genre: horror
viewing setting: home DVD, 6/6/22

synopsis: In a small Nebraska town, an evil dead kid comes back to life and magically possesses all the other kids.

impressions: I don't know about this movie, or this series, at this point. There was no connection (or attempt at one) between this and the previous films, other than a cornfield and children possessed by evil. Even taken on its own, the plot didn't make much sense. Notably, there were also several stupid actions, including a half-drunk doofus who chooses to crawl under a random assortment of sharp objects hanging from ropes, a guy who can't avoid a medical cart that somehow has a sharp-edged tray extention, and a lady who decides to take a shortcut through the cornfield even though she can't see ahead of the truck. Whatever. By the one-hour mark, I found myself wishing that the cornfield would come alive and start destroying everyone (which I vaguely recall happening in at least one of these movies before) just so the movie would end faster.

body count: 6 confirmed, and none of them were corny (rather, they all happened with real or makeshift weapons)

early appearance alert: A young Naomi Watts is the main protagonist.

acting: Naomi Watts is the main hero, and does a good job being fairly competent. William Windom - who had a memorable turn as Commodore Decker in the classic 1967 Star Trek episode The Doomsday Machine - is the old doctor here. Karen Black is a crazy mom who's haunted by dreams that make no sense, for reasons that are never explained.

final word: Watchable horror...barely.

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